Secrets and Lies (21 page)

One of the most difficult aspects of writing for Kerry was deciding on a title for her book. Sometimes her titles had very little to do with what was between the covers, but she knew how important they were for marketing purposes. She envied some of her writer friends who were truly brilliant in that regard; they thought about what their next book was going to be about, an appropriate title popped into their minds, and so, before they even sat down to write their first line, they've put one vital task to bed.

One particular friend had an uncanny knack of choosing a title that miraculously encapsulated exactly what the book was about, ergo: the first line of “Party Time” was “let's have a party” and the plot seemed to spread from there.

By contrast, Kerry's titles were often “working” right up to the last minute. She seemed to have no talent in that regard and, with a book close to production, was usually to-ing and fro-ing with Nuala, and, by extension, her publisher, right up until the last minute.

Kerry's first novel went right down to the wire. Nuala came to her house on the evening before the book had to go to the printer and they'd sat in her living room trawling through dictionaries, books of quotations and poetry, a thesaurus and even a Bible until, at about quarter to midnight, they'd finally hammered out a suitable title for the book; “A Place of Sunshine.”

Nowadays, out of sheer desperation, Kerry maintained an ever-growing file on her c
omputer with a list of phrases which in her opinion, could potentially be used as titles for future books. However, she had never yet been able to use even one of them, no matter how many ways she tried to adapt them to suit what she'd written! Maura always laughed at her sister's attempts at advance planning. One of her favourite sayings was, “when people make plans, God smiles.” She was definitely one of the people to whom Kerry instantly turned when plans in her writing life went askew. Poor Maura was used to getting panicky calls in the middle of the night from her sister.

Kerry had experienced her worst writing disaster only that very week; literally half of what she had written for her latest novel had completely and mysteriously vanished into the ether and could not be retrieved. Maura and had been exceptionally consoling and had tried her utmost to be helpful, as did the computer guy in Cork's Apple computer dealership, who, when she brought her computer into him, worked on it for more than seven hours. He'd surfed the internet asking for help, and even rang Apple headquarters in California for assistance, but nobody could solve the problem. The only clue about what had happened was a small, pie-shaped area of damage on the machine's motherboard that nobody could quite figure out.

It was unimaginable how Kerry felt when the moment finally dawned on her that she would not be able to retrieve her book. She would never forget that day as she pulled into the driveway at Ballycotton House and saw white horses tricking about on the beach below her. She felt as if they were dancing on the grave of her poor lost book. They didn't have a care in the world and it seemed like they were laughing in the face of her misery. She could hear the mockery in their neighing voices, “serves you right, never coming out here to play in the fresh air, always hunched over your computer in there...”

She resolved to backup her work in as many ways as she possibly could; USB stick, email, laptop. Saving her work almost became an obsession to her.

A week's loss of work carved by her method was a very serious matter; six weeks' loss of ten chapters and six weeks' worth of changes was a total catastrophe! Kerry decided that the setback with her computer had occurred for a reason. It was an omen or a lesson. Was someone or something trying to signal to her that she should quit writing altogether and seek another challenge? She dreaded the thought of having to rewrite most of her book. Nuala would have an absolute meltdown. There was no way she'd reach the deadline now!

Kerry sat back in her chair and gazed unseeingly out the window. Her mind raced with the possible jobs she might be able to do, but nothing appealed to her. S
he was forty two years old and had no desire to pursue a new career at her age! The thought of starting at the bottom of the ladder and struggling to work her way up made her shiver. Most people were vaguely contemplating retirement at her age, not starting all over again!

She kne
w she was lucky. Her family wasn't dependent on her money to survive, unlike some of her other writer friends, who had no pension plan and nobody to fund disability, sick or compassionate leave. When something unexpected happened in their lives they just had to keep going, splitting their concentration between their writing and the crisis. They were forced to shorten their sleep and try to increase their work rate within the hours available to them.

Kerry took a few deep breaths and shook herself. It was time to be practical. The work rate that it would demand to fulfill her contractual deadline was not humanly possible. She stood up and threw a few more briquettes on the open fire which kept her study toasty warm, then she poured herself another coffee and sat down in the warm, flickering quietness to consider her options.

For half an hour she carried on an internal mental battle on what she could possibly do to salvage the situation. Finally, she accepted that there was absolutely no way that she could let a stupid technology glitch defeat her. Bathed in the calm light from the fire and the early morning sunshine, she sipped her coffee and tried to settle into a frame of mind where she could go back to the beginning of her latest book and rewrite the whole damned thing! She decided that she'd just have to confess to Nuala what had happened and ask her to extend the contractual deadline for delivery, which would be personally difficult for her as she prided herself on her professionalism and ability to deliver what she had promised.

So was this to be her lesson? Would she just have to learn to accept that she couldn't please everyone all the time? Thinking about this, she remembered being sent oodles of similar lessons but she hadn't been paying attention.

“Bloody computer!” she shouted, thumping her desk.

“What's wrong with you?” Conor asked, suddenly reappearing in the doorway, almost making her jump out of her skin.

“Do you have to sneak up on my like that?!” she cried.

“Sorry, what's up with you?” he repeated.

“This bloody computer has lost most of my book so I'll never make the deadline now. Nuala's going to kill me.”

“Didn't you save your work as you went along?” Conor yawned loudly as he rubbed sleep from his tired eyes.

“Of course I saved my work, that's fundamental. I'm obsessed with saving my work! I don't know what happened. I spent hours at the Apple store in town trying to get it fixed but it's irretrievable, I might as well just face facts, but I'd love to know what caused it. I mean, what if it happens again?”

“The only possible explanation for what happened is that either while plugging in your computer or unplugging it, bu
t a trillion to one accident of coincidental timing, it was struck by lightning.”

“What?” Kerry stared at him incredulously.

“Yeah, don't you remember when we first moved here that Jerome told us that this part of Kinsale is rich in copper and Ballycotton House actually rests on a seam? Copper, as I'm sure you already know, attracts lightning. It doesn't even have to be stormy outside. Remember, years ago, when I was waiting for some important work documents to be faxed through to me and it took us ages to realise that the machine was inexplicably broken?”

Kerry nodded slowly, vaguely remembering the incident with the fax machine.

Conor suddenly started chuckling to himself, much to Kerry's annoyance. “What's so funny?” she asked. “I could do with a laugh.”

“I'm just remembering another of Jerome's many stories,” Conor explained. “He said it was all he could do to persuade his wife, Eileen, to have the telephone installed in the house, anyway after many months of begging and pleading she finally relented and agreed to his urgings that a telephone should be installed. He said that it was with great difficulty and the use of a lot of manpower and heavy machinery that the foundations for the telephone lines were set. Over a period of a few weeks a long line of poles was erected at great expense across rough terrain, finally reaching Ballycotton House. The much anticipated telephone was finally installed, tested and found to be working perfectly. However, Eileen was still mistrustful and refused to use it, with good cause as it turned out. One evening, while she was sitting by the fire, there was a sort of fizz-bang sound and the phone flew past her head and crashed to the ground beside the window!”

“Oh my goodness!” Kerry clutched her mouth and dissolved into helpless giggles.

“You haven't laughed like that in a while,” Conor smiled, planting a kiss on her head when she'd finally recovered.

“You always could make me chuckle,” Kerry grinned, reaching up to give him a hug.

She leaned against his strong, broad chest for a moment and wrapped her arms tightly around him.

There were many wretched days when technology let her down, when her head ached, her spine pained, her eyes strained, when she could feel a tingling in the dowager's hump she'd developed from slumping over the keyboard but Kerry knew that her writing life offered amazing highs too.

Yet again, she was standing by the French doors in the living room of Ballycotton House, looking out over the bay and the headland fields. One of the neighbouring farms' lemony calves cavorted, stopped, seemed to think for a second, then bucklepped a half-turn and rushed to butt at its dozy mother. “Wake up, mommy, wake up, it's great to be alive,” Kerry imagined the little calf saying.

Yes, indeed it was a great day to be alive. The coffee was strong and good. It was March fourteenth and only a few short days until their “holiday of a lifetime” to Japan. Kerry had finally completed work on her lost book and had just emailed it to Nuala. Her work was done, albeit a few weeks late, but it was in Nuala's capable hands now, and there was no going back. The sun, already warm on her face, had started to burn off the sea-mist that shrouded Kinsale Bay which jutted over the wild Atlantic Ocean. The crisp air was diamond-clear and she could hear the shrieks of the seagulls calling to each other far out over the calm water.

It was an exhilarating morning and although it was only a few minutes past six o' clock, already there were a few people out walking and jogging. The sunny morning reminded her of the exciting travelling she'd enjoyed in connection with her last book. There'd been promotional book tours to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and research trips to France, Britain, Canada and, of course, America. Research on her novel called for a drive through the lush, posh Cotswolds with her editor and close friend, Nuala. They'd spent a weekend savouring glorious red wine and divine cheeses at the heavenly village of Collioure, which was the next village down from the Corniche from Argeles-sur-Mer in the Languedoc in France.

Nuala accompanied her to the fire-red earth of Prince Edward Island off the coast of Canada, for another of her novels, where they'd found themselves tripping over coachloads of happy-snappy Japanese tourists who were immersing themselves in the home and lore created by the wonderful “Anne of Green Gables” series. This was where Nuala and Kerry also discovered that alcohol was sold only during limited opening times in state-run shops.

Nuala was also there for the first week of Kerry's week-long trip to research her tenth novel, “Clouds,” in the vast, glorious emptiness and beauty of Montana. Although Kerry loved and greatly appreciated Nuala's company and they travelled well together, the three weeks she spent alone traversing its plains and the Rockies cemented that huge state permanently into her dream time. Another cast of Kerry's characters was taken through the vast canyons of Arizona.

She drove almost three thousand miles through high desert, lush forest, snow bowls, brick-red rock lands and dunes of blinding white gypsum on the White Sands Missile Range. She climbed through forests of saguaro, those amazing cactus oddities that take two hundred years to become the three or four-armed icons of so many Westerns. She visited pistachio farms and was amazed to discover that the reason they cost so much was that they take eleven years to mature and each nut has to be harvested by hand!

The choice of those specific locations in America was not arbitrary. Kerry had always been fascinated by local and very specific Irish emigration patterns; for instance, many Connemara and Aran Island people clustered in Chicago. The connection be
tween Kinsale in County Cork and Montana is copper mining; the miners from the Beara peninsula travelled to the mines of Butte.

Kerry extended her interest cross-border into Canada, well, into the ocean off its coast, because the antecedents of many residents of Prince Edward Island were from County Monaghan. Shortly before the Great Famine of 1845, a priest from County Monaghan learned that in an effort to populate their empty territories, the Canadian authorities were giving away fertile plots of land. He went to Prince Edward Island to investigate and wrote back, extolling the virtues of the island and assuring his parishoners that the offer of free land was genuine. Many of his flock took him at his word and went to settle there.

It wasn't until the characters appeared in her stories that Kerry realised how many scenes she had stockpiled from her memory banks. Even the layout of Ballycotton House fed into some of her novels and it was only having finished her latest book that she realised that her great grand-aunt, who was sent into domestic service in her late teens, subconsciously provided the model, fictionally embroidered to a high degree, for one phase of her character's life.